10/11/2010 @ 12:30PM25,294 views

Whooping Cough Epidemic: Blame The Anti-Vaccination Movement

California is suffering the worst epidemic of pertussis, or whooping cough, in 60 years, with over 5,200 cases already, the most since 1950. Nine babies have died, all of them too young to receive the vaccine. Michigan is also reporting a serious outbreak, with over 600 cases so far this year. The deaths of the infants in California are tragic, and what’s more tragic is that some of them almost certainly could have been prevented if more people had been vaccinated.

The pertussis vaccine, called DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis) has been responsible for a dramatic drop in whooping cough in recent decades. It isn’t 100% effective, but its effectiveness relies in part on “herd immunity”: if enough people are immune to the bacteria, then even if someone gets sick, the disease cannot easily spread through the community. This is especially true for very young infants, who are too young to be vaccinated and whose immune systems are not yet strong enough to defeat the bacteria on their own.

It’s not a coincidence that California is the center of the new pertussis epidemic. Vaccination rates among adults in California have been dropping in recent years, large due to the influence of anti-vaccination zealots such as Jenny McCarthy and groups such as Age of Autism. Anti-vaccination sentiments seem to strike a chord with relatively well-educated segments of the population – the same people who favor organic food and want to use “natural” products as much as possible. Anti-vaxers appeal to this group by arguing that vaccines are unnatural, and that the body’s own immune system can be “boosted” by various natural treatments. Appealing though this may sound, it has no basis in science. California makes it easy for parents to claim exemptions from the required vaccinations for their children, and exemptions have more than doubled since 1997, according to the L.A. Times.

Among the anti-vaccinationists not helping the current pertussis outbreak is “Dr. Bob” Sears, a kindler, gentler anti-vaxer who claims (like many of them) to be in favor of vaccines, but only under his own, unscientific terms. He stated flatly in the Huffington Post (a hotbed of medical misinformation) recently that pregnant women should not get the DTaP vaccine. But as Dr. Paul Offit tells us in a tragic story, refusing the vaccine can lead directly to the death of an infant. Dr. Bob’s advice is seriously flawed. (While there is a lack of data, the CDC states explicitly that pregnancy is not a contraindication.) I should add that Sears has written two books on vaccines and autism, promoting his misguided “alternative” vaccine schedule (see this article in Pediatrics about that) and his rather naive theories about the rise in autism diagnoses.

Everyone should have their children vaccinated. On top of that, in order to maintain herd immunity, most of us should get the pertussis booster shot if we haven’t had one in the last ten years. That’s what vaccine expert Paul Offit recommends, and I’m planning to follow his advice myself. It won’t take long, and it might save a life.

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Steve, I used to be a fan of yours but after seeing the CBS story exposing the vaccine industry and Offit today on TV (and the internet today- even talked about it at our monthly Mom’s lunch today) We’re moving to the other side. Had no idea these “experts” who deem the vaccines safe were getting paid for it when they could hurt our children. Had NO idea.

proudmom – I haven’t seen the CBS piece (but I will look it), but the anti-vax movement continually attacks vaccine developers as in some sort of conspiracy to “hurt our children,” as you write. Offit has devoted his career to helping children, and he has donated all profits from his latest book (for example) to charity. I highly recommend that book, Autism’s False Prophets, where you can read that many anti-vaxers are themselves reaping large profits by offering completely unproven “cures” that are often demonstrably harmful. So it’s unbelievably hypocritical of them to use this argument.

I encourage you to scrutinize the motives of those attacking Offit just as skeptically as you’re scrutinizing him.

proudmom, you’re relying on very slim grounds for a very important parenting decision. Have you really decided to forgo vaccinations for your children because a television reporter and some friends at your monthly kaffeeklatch convinced you that you should? Do you have any idea what pertussis is like? Measles? Polio? I’m old enough to have had the first two diseases, and to have family members who spent time in the iron lung. Anyone who tells you that a “naturally strong immune system” will protect your kids if these cooties come at them is deluded. Sharyl Atkisson has allowed her sympathy for certain parents of autistic children — not all of them, just the ones who have decided to file vaccine injury lawsuits — to impair her professional judgment and send her careening on an extended, misguided effort to smear anyone involved in vaccine development. The smear includes ridiculous suggestions that it’s somehow unethical for a professional scientist to be paid to work, or for an inventor to profit from an invention. Atkisson’s friends’ lawsuits are being dismissed in droves, not because of some dire conspiracy to harm children and screw families, but because the evidence just isn’t there.

So, vaccinate your kids already! It’s way, way safer than getting sick, and vaccine-preventable diseases are much, much worse than you might imagine.

proudmom, I viewed the CBS piece. It’s an awful, misleading hack job by Sheryl Atkisson, who is woefully confused about vaccines and doesn’t seem to care. She ran a piece last year on the H1N1 vaccine that was so full of misinformation, scare tactics, and ignorance that it was unbelievable. I commented on that in the comments section of my other blog at the time: http://genome.fieldofscience.com/2009/10/more-misinformation-on-flu-from-mercola.html

Atkisson likes to take a tiny fact and then blow it up into a conspiracy, and she doesn’t bother to do any real fact-checking. She didn’t interview Offit for that piece, and she implied – incorrectly – that he’s making lots of money from the rotavirus vaccine, which he isn’t (he donates his share of any profits). But even if he were, that wouldn’t mean that the vaccine is ineffective.

I have watched Ms. Attkisson’s reporting in the past few years with great dismay. As an autism parent and a blogger who covers (amongst other things) the vaccine-autism stories, I have been continually amazed at her unprofessional and ill-informed approach to the subject.

There was a paper in PLoS that showed that the MMR vaccine doesn’t cause autism and bowel disease as Andrew Wakefield implied was possible in his now retracted Lancet paper.

Sharyl Attkisson blogged the story–by merely quoting Wakefield’s press release on the paper. I wish I could get a CBS reporter salary for so little work, except that I wouldn’t accept money to be a mouthpiece for a discredited doctor like Wakefield.

Sharyl Attkisson has a connection to the blog, Age of Autism, whose positions are far from civil and far from science based. The blog has been called “anti-vaccine” by a number of journalists. A fax sent to Ms. Attkisson was posted on the Age of Autism blog within hours of being sent. Besides being rather unprofessional, this showed a clear link between Ms. Attkisson and that blog.

Given the clear bias she has shown, I faxed CBS News asking if Ms. Attkisson or her staff had any undisclosed conflicts of interests involving autism or vaccines. No response was given.

Her recent coverage of the Hannah Poling settlement was very odd. Ms. Attkisson forgot her own reporting on previous vaccine-autism cases and her new story contradicted her previous stories.

She is probably the most prominent of the biased, poor journalists who have inflicted so much harm on the autism communities.

You should be ashamed, not proud, if you’ve been holding vaccines on your little ones. You are not only endangering them but also undermining the entire principle of mass-vaccination, which prevents spread of disease through herd-immunity. So my mistakenly skipping shots to “protect” your kids, you’re putting them at higher risk of illness and death, as well as everyone else’s kids.

So, thanks for that. Hopefully this movement will be derailed in the near future before too many gullible parents make the same decision as you with disastrous implications for the future of disease prevention. I hope for your sake and mostly for the sake of your kids that they do not suffer illness as a result of your ignorance. Because of people like you, we could see polio return, but maybe if you buy some stock in wheelchairs are scooters it will turn out okay for you.